The present invention generally relates to controlling the transfer of medication data, and more particularly, to a system and a method for transferring medication data between medical infusion pumps and patient data management systems.
Patient data management systems (“PDMS”) have provided a significant advance in the field of patient care. Such systems typically comprise a network of interconnected computers located in a health care facility that store and make available numerous data concerning the patients and medications of the facility. Data ranging from administrative data to vital signs data, to the status of ongoing medical fluid infusions are typically available at one or more computers or displays of the PDMS network. In one well-known system, a central server or servers are connected to a physician order entry (“POE”) system computer, computers, or other device. The central server or servers are also connected to the pharmacy information system (“PIS”) computer, computers, or other device, and also to a series of bedside computers. In a more complete version of such a PDMS, each bedside has its own computer forming a part of the PDMS.
Patient data management systems, such as the one discussed briefly above, have become highly desirable in the busy health care facilities typical today. Under today's conditions, nurses have much to do and systems such as these are meant to make the nurse's job easier by automatically correlating patient information and updating patient records as well as providing means to avoid medication errors. Today, the PDMS attempts to provide a single location at which all patient-related data can be viewed by the nurse as desired. Additionally, the interfaces between the nurses and the PDMS have been improved. More and more PDMS attempt to provide nurses with choices to select when inputting data as opposed to requiring manual text data input. While the ability to select data is not error proof, but it provides a much improved process over manual text input. An example is the selection of a medical fluid name to be infused into a patient. Selecting the medical fluid name from a list generally allows for faster and more accurate input of data while avoiding spelling errors should the medical fluid name be typed manually by the nurse.
Many PDMS make available general information about the patients as well as specific infusion information. Such information includes physical data about a patient such as weight, age, and allergies. Data also may include vital signs, such as temperature, blood pressure, and other. Also available can be the list of prescriptions and medications for the patient, whether they are past, present, or future. In the PDMS discussed above, the bedside computer may comprise a sophisticated monitor, such as a liquid crystal color display with graphics capability such that large amounts of data may be presented as selected by the nurse or physician, but at the same time may comprise a relatively older technology processor that is incapable of a large instantaneous flows of data. Requesting large amounts of data to be transferred through such older technology processors can cause the processor to function poorly or even “crash.”
Another part of the patient medication system in a health care facility is the infusion pump. In many cases, physicians prescribe the administration of medical fluids, such as a drug, to a patient through the use of an infusion pump. Infusion pumps are capable of very accurate administration of medical fluids to a patient over long periods of time. Their use is preferred in many cases where the accurate administration of a drug is necessary to obtain the optimum treatment effects of the drug. However infusion pumps must be programmed with the infusion parameters, the programming checked, and the infusion monitored during the course of the infusion. Patients may have six or more such infusions occurring simultaneously. Such activities typically comprise a part of the duties of a nurse. They require the nurse to monitor both the display of the PDMS for certain patient data and to monitor the display of the infusion pump or pumps.
One goal of many health care facilities is to provide increased “connectivity” between all medical devices with the PDMS. Such increased connectivity would permit the nurse to monitor only one display; i.e., the PDMS display, to view patient information thereby lessening the time nurses must take to monitor patient-specific data. Health care facilities have been requesting that infusion pumps, as well as other medical instruments, increase their connectivity capabilities so that they can share data with the PDMS. In any case, health care facilities desire that the PDMS be able to present infusions underway at the PDMS display so that at one glance, nurses can check on the status of a patient's treatment.
While almost every infusion pump includes a front panel data display, which displays data in text, graphics, or both, not all infusion pumps offer comprehensive lists of drug names for this display. In those that do, the nurse may select the name of the drug being infused to the patient from the list of drug names in the infusion pump. That drug name will then appear on the infusion pump display as the infusion progresses. Even if the pump display does not include the name of the drug currently being infused, many health care facilities require that the PDMS accurately display the name of the drug. Optimally, when the pump is being programmed, the nurse or operator selects the correct name of the drug from the pump display and the pump, through connectivity with the PDMS, then informs the PDMS of the correct drug name. The PDMS then displays the same, and correct, drug name associated with this pump. However, even if the pump does not have the means to display certain drug names, the health care facility may require that at least the PDMS must. To require the nurse that programmed the pump to then access the PDMS and type the name of the drug into the PDMS and associate it with this particular infusion pump adds duties to the nurse's already busy schedule. Further, there is a potential source of errors in infusion medication and its documentation, because the nurse can mismatch the particular pump and its assigned drug name. It would be desirable to have such a process made easier for nurses and safer for patients.
The list of drugs available for use in treating patients in health care facilities today is extensive, numbering in the thousands. Even so, some physicians prescribe some custom medical drugs not on such common lists. These custom medical drugs may be combinations of known drugs with a name reflecting the names of the drugs combined. Although these custom drugs are not on the extensive drug list, they are easy enough to prepare by the pharmacy and the PDMS is able to easily accommodate and display such drug names. However, infusion pumps, with their limited memories and limited connectivity for data transfer, are often unable to store such custom drug names or even extensive lists of thousands of drugs at this time. Yet the ability to display on the pump screen the drug being infused or at least to indicate on the display of the PDMS precisely which drug each infusion pump is infusing to the patient is desired, or even required, by health care facilities today.
Because the list of medical drugs commonly available today is so large, it can take additional time just for the mechanical process of scrolling through a drug list to find the name of a pertinent drug. Even though the process has been made faster by means such as alphabetizing the drug names and classifying them into categories or “pages” so that one may quickly go to more focused sub-lists to select the pertinent drug, the process still requires significant amounts of time. Thus some health care facilities have compiled a “standard” list of the one-hundred common medical drugs used in that facility. This substantially reduces the amount of time necessary to find a particular drug likely to be used in that facility and results in a much lower amount of data should the list need to be transferred among the various devices forming a part of the PDMS, including infusion pumps. However, such list often does not include custom drugs prescribed by physicians.
For those pumps that do not have the extensive list of drugs, they will work fine after being programmed and can infuse the drug installed in the pump even though the name of the drug is not displayed on the pump. In such a case, the only way to find out what drug is being infused is to look at the label on the bag of medical drug. This requires information gathering which also adds time to the nurse's duties and is not desirable
Some pumps include a bar code system that is used to assist in providing data to the pump concerning the drug name being infused and in some cases, the actual pumping parameters for that pump and patient. While such a system could assist in data transfer under certain conditions, some health care facilities do not agree with using bar codes. Bar codes have been found to become inaccurate or unusable due to smudging, misplacement, obliteration, or other alterations that can easily occur in an intense medical care environment. It is also undesirable to have the necessity of printing bar code labels before using them since such efforts add to an already busy workload for nurses.
Therefore, a need exists in the art for a system and method by which the drugs being infused to a patient by infusion pumps be indicated to the PDMS so that such drugs can be displayed at the PDMS for reducing the time nurses need to spend in monitoring patients. The present invention fulfills these needs and others.